Visions Of Him
by LadyBush
Summary: Aragorn is King of Gondor. He should be happy. Instead he’s plagued by dreams and visions of his fallen lover, Boromir. Aragorn begins to wonder if the path to happiness really lies in reality... SLASH.


Pairing: Aragorn/Boromir

Rating: PG-13

**Note**: Reality is in regular type; anything of questionable reality is in _**bold italics.**_

I dedicate this story to my Boromir action doll. I know he'll like it.

**Visions Of Him**

The first time was a shock.

Aragorn, King of Gondor, was sitting at the High Table and dining with a group of respected ambassadors from the neighbouring province of Rohan.

"Will Your Majesty care for some more venison?" a waiter had asked.

Aragorn had smiled, prepared to except and then-

_**"I wouldn't if I were you," said Boromir, sliding up to the waiter and stealing a slice of tender meat from the serving tray. He grinned at Aragorn.** _

"Why ever not?" Aragorn asked, in the second before he realised he was talking to a dead man.

_**"You're getting fat," Boromir said candidly. "All this kingly idleness cannot be good for you."**_

Aragorn blinked hard, once and then again. Boromir had vanished, although several slices of tender meat were piled high on his plate. Aragorn felt suddenly and inexplicably faint.

"Is Your Majesty quite well?" asked a concerned Royal Aide appearing at his elbow.

"Yes… No…" said Aragorn. He excused himself shortly afterwards.

**Two Months Later**

_**Boromir is standing in the courtyard, beneath the White Tree, all bright-eyed and red-cheeked. He's had too much ale.**_

**"_Your Majesty!" shouts Boromir, stumbling towards him. He bows –or at least tries to. Instead he wobbles precariously before collapsing on the floor._**

**"_There's no need to prostrate yourself at my feet!" Aragorn laughs. He's caught up in the humour of the movement; caught up in Boromir's mirth, his daft crooked smile, the sparkling eyes (all pupil, no green) gazing up at him._**

_**"Here," Aragorn says. He offers Boromir his hand and hauls the drunken man to his feet.**_

_**Maybe Aragorn's a little drunk too: drunk on love and a stupid man who can't take his drink.**_

**"_I love you," he half-whispers. _**

_**Boromir turns deadly serious in an instant. He might still be swaying slightly but the words when he says them are deep and gentle and infused with meaning. "Take me home."**_

_**Aragorn loops an arm about his waist and supports Boromir's weight. The other man is heavier than him but it doesn't seem to matter.**_

_**When you're in love, what does matter?**_

_**They go home. **_

_**Together.** _

Aragorn wakes up with a start, as he always does. Following the act of waking, there's always this split-second of hope as he reaches a hand out across the bed. There's no one there of course and his hand gropes the air a moment longer before resting desolately on the silk sheets. After the moment of hope comes the long slow minutes of sadness. He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling and imagines he can see patterns when there's nothing there.

Just like how he imagines Boromir is there when in fact he's alone.

So very alone.

_**"You frown when you sleep," says Boromir.**_

_**He's sprawled in the chair by the bed, bare-chested and wearing loose trousers that are dark blue silk like the bed sheets. Aragorn knows Boromir would look good in his bed as implicitly as he knows that he should not offer.**_

**"_Come to bed," he growls. _**

_**Boromir does look good in the bed but he also feels cold as Aragorn runs a hand down his chest and feels the goose bumps on the puckered flesh. **_

**"_I'm cold," Boromir whispers. _**

_**It's not a statement but an invitation.**_

"Your Majesty." The voice is made of glass and the knock is the knock of someone unsure whether or not they want to be admitted.

"Come in."

Aragorn groans as he realises he must have gone back to sleep. He blinks tiredly at the Royal Aide whose name he can't remember.

"Good morning, Your Majesty."

Aragorn is disheveleld and bleary-eyed. "What time is it?" he groans.

"It is half-past-nine."The aide sets a bowl of steaming water down on the table across the room before bowing deeply. "The Steward respectfully requests a word with Your Majesty," he says.

Aragorn doesn't want to see Faramir but he knows he must. He can't keep putting it off. "I shall meet him in the map room, an hour before noon."

The aid bows again and leaves the King's chamber on silent feet. Aragorn waits to hear the sound of his footsteps grow suitably distant before hauling himself out of bed and padding, stark naked, across his room. He shivers and gazes at the goose pimples on his arms in wonderment.

Just like Boromir's, he thinks, remembering Boromir against the dark-blue bed sheets.

"That never happened," he says aloud. His voice is hollow and unconvincing. The seed of doubt has crept into his mind. "At least I don't think it did."

His gaze travels down from his arm and he views his body with something akin to disgust.

**_Boromir is shameless when naked: Aragorn a little more cautious. It's hard for him to except his lover's scrutiny without blushing._**

**_"Too many state dinners I believe!" Boromir is laughing at him –with him- he doesn't really care._**

**_"Are you calling me fat?" he asks mildly, although the subject has been growing on his own mind as well. He wants to be fighting again, or tracking, hunting, on a quest… Anything but the idleness of courtly living. He's taken to inventing himself extra tasks; limiting himself to two courses at dinner when everyone else, Boromir included, has five. And Boromir's still lithe as a twenty year old and Aragorn's growing fat. _**

**_Boromir stops laughing long enough to give a blinding smile. "A little round about the belly perhaps but we can soon remedy that."_**

Aragorn ponders the bowl of steaming water for a second before dunking his head in. Nearly a minute later he comes up, soaking wet and panting for breath. "These dreams have to stop," he says.

Then he pulls on some clothes: robes, finery, jewels: he wears so many riches and yet he's still one of the most underdressed men of the court.

* * *

He visits Arwen first. She's lounging on her bed, dressed in white. A dozen courtly women surround her, yet she eclipses everyone with her beauty. She's nearing eight months pregnant and she glows. 

"My dear..." Aragorn bows before her, then kisses her hand and her cheek and her forehead. "How are you."

"Better than you," Arwen says chidingly. "You're very pale."

"I'm fine, thank you for your concern."

"You do know how much I worry about you, dear."

"You needn't bother," Aragorn says. His tone of voice is rather petty.

Arwen shakes her head, so a loose strand of hazel hair falls across her face. "I cannot stop caring," she says. "I love you."

Three words that can mean the world to somebody or else turn the world upside down. Arwen vanishes before Aragorn's eyes; her soft face is replaced with one much harder, far more masculine.

**"_I love you," Boromir whispers. His words are clear as morning dew but his face is like thunder. The cocky Boromir has retreated and the fierce, proud and at times dangerously neurotic man of former days has re-emerged. "I'm a damned fool."_**

_**Aragorn sees nothing foolish about being in love. "Why?" he asks.**_

**"_I've fallen for the bloody King! Fools' guide to getting your heart broken, method number one: fall in love with royalty." Boromir shakes his head and for a moment looks utterly wild. "Such a bloody fool." There are tears in his eyes. He turns away._**

_**Aragorn thinks that if he died right now then this is how he would like to remember Boromir. Kiss-swollen lips, windswept hair, mad sparkling eyes… Did Boromir ever really look like that? That desirable? Aragorn doesn't know; doesn't really care. He wishes he could die right now…**_

"Darling!"

Aragorn is startled out of his reverie.

Arwen is gazing at him with concerned eyes. "I don't believe you've taken a breath in the last minute." She sits up and reaches out for him with a tender hand. "You look dreadful. Shall I call a healer?"

"No," Aragorn shakes off her worry in the same way that he shakes off his own doubts that Boromir exists. "I'm perfectly well." He tries to smile. "Fit as a fiddle," he says. And thin as a willow-wand, he adds in his head.

"Whatever you say, dear." Arwen is not convinced but she respects him enough to drop the subject.

* * *

Aragorn's tread echoes as he walks briskly down the stone corridor. He keeps his eyes facing straight ahead as he passes room after room on either side of him. He knows somehow that if he turns to the side, he'll see Boromir standing in a doorway, beckoning him into another room, the scent of sex and what is to come already faint on the air… 

There's a staircase at the far end of the corridor. It's narrow and winds… upwards… ever upwards… Aragorn stops thinking about Boromir long enough to spare a thought for left-handed swordsmen: always the first to attack up spiral staircases because they're the only ones who can use a sword round a right-bend.

**_"Thinking about left-handed swordsmen, are we?" says Boromir. He's walking down the stairs towards Aragorn, a vision blocking the King's way. "Don't you realise that anyone who attacks Gondor deserves to be killed, Your Majesty?"_**

"We've seen too much death already… I won't weep if I never kill again."

The words 'kill' and 'death' hang in the air between Boromir and Aragorn.

**_"You will. We're killers, you and I." Boromir pulls back the skirts of the blue robes he wears to display a sword in a beautiful scabbard of silver and gold. "Can't afford to be caught unawares," he says._**

"You're already dead."

**_"Yes, so you keep reminding yourself… Quite tiresome really. You need to enjoy yourself a bit."_**

Aragorn glares at Boromir accusingly. "I might manage to have some fun, if you'd only leave me alone. You died and I mourned. Is that not enough? It should be enough- the dreams I can live with but this… This!" Aragorn points at Boromir and then lays the finger to his own breast. "I can't keep talking to you! You don't exist! I imagine you!"

**_"Do you?" asks Boromir. "Then make me go away."_**

"Fine."

Aragorn closes his eyes, opens them once more and smiles because Boromir has vanished. He ascends to the Map Room now, it's high up in a tower looming across the city of Gondor. Aragorn is a little breathless before he reaches the top. "I need to do something; become healthy again," he mutters to himself.

He knocks on the door before him. "It's Aragorn!" he calls.

A few seconds later he's swept through the door by Faramir. "Come in, Your Majesty."

"Just Aragorn, if you don't mind." Aragorn manages to smile at his faithful, long-suffering steward. "Don't stand on ceremony."

"Of course."

Nevertheless, Faramir paces up and down the room several times before he speaks. "I was thinking," he begins in a would-be conversational tone. "About a memorial."

"For who?"

"The dead." Faramir looks down at the floor.

Aragorn doesn't mean to say it but somehow it just slips out. "For Boromir," he says.

A flash of pain flickers across Faramir's face. "For all the men who died," he says.

"Yes. A statue perhaps?"

"A garden." Faramir is certain; his green eyes are the oddest mixture of sad and happy, light and darkness, certainty tainted with the curse of too much knowledge… His eyes are haunted, Aragorn realises, at exactly the same moment as he finally understands why he doesn't like to spend too much time with Faramir.

He's seen those haunted eyes before.

Boromir had spoken of the White Tower with shadowed eyes: eyes that hadn't expected to see Gondor again. That had been just before the first kiss: this one heated kiss in Lothlorien, that had been broken off all too soon because the elvish wood was far too slow and still for kisses like that.

Aragorn suddenly realises he has to ask something. "Do you ever see Boromir?"

Faramir looks pained again and Aragorn begins to apologise. He's quickly silenced. "I do see him," Faramir says. "All the time." He smiles sadly at Aragorn. "When I see my reflection… It always startles me. I think it's him for a half-second maybe and then it isn't. Quite ridiculous actually. I don't even look like him."

**_Suddenly, Boromir is standing in the corner of the room. He looks fondly at his brother and then shakes his head. "He doesn't look anything like me. Except the nose… Huge just like mine." He flashes a stupid grin at Aragorn._**

"Don't be so vain. It's not huge at all!" Aragorn curses himself as he realises that he's talking to a figment of his imagination.

Faramir looks at Aragorn with worry in his gentle eyes. "What's not huge?" he asks.

"Oh… Nothing. Well, your nose, actually."

Faramir laughs. "Oh it's gigantic!"

**_Boromir tugs on Aragorn's sleeve. "Did you hear that?" he demands. "'Gigantic' indeed. I've never been so offended in my entire…"_**

Aragorn's dormant temper flares up in a second. "WOULD YOU PLEASE BE QUIET AND… AND LEAVE ME ALONE!" he bellows.

Faramir blinks a few times. "I'll leave," he says." I didn't realise that I was… Well, never mind."

"No, I'm sorry. Faramir, don't-"

The empty room swallows Aragorn's protests. Faramir had already left.

**_"Now what on earth did you do that for?" asks Boromir. "He's had a hard enough time recently… Losing his father, that must have hurt."_**

"He lost his brother too. You're dead."

**_Boromir shrugs. "Whatever His Majesty says." He vanishes like fog beneath the burning sun._**

And Aragorn, King of Gondor, is left alone.

* * *

He stamps around for a while, punches the walls a couple of times and his knuckles bleed. The anger doesn't leave. In the end, he remembers something Arwen once said to him: "Love above all else". The words have stayed with him through the long years in the wildnerness and now they come back to taunt him. 

Aragorn walks back to his chambers with a determined look and a firm stride. Servants avoid him; courtiers bow and move on without speaking.

In his chamber, he's confronted with Boromir.

"You're not real," he tells his lover, his dream, firmly.

_**Boromir is unrepentant. "Does it matter?" he demands.** _

This is unexpected. Aragorn takes a deep breath and wonders. _"_No,"he finally whispers."Not at all."

_**Boromir's face slowly breaks into a smile.**_

And Aragorn smiles back.


End file.
